From rigor to rigidity: How CHED’s policy undermines academic excellence
The Commission on Higher Education’s policy on vertical alignment, as stated in CMO No. 15, series of 2019, was designed to ensure that graduate programs are handled by specialists whose degrees match their field.
It requires that every master’s or doctoral program have at least four full-time faculty members holding degrees in the exact same specialization. In theory, this aims to promote coherence and quality. In practice, it has become a serious obstacle to academic freedom, regional development, and intellectual growth in Philippine higher education.
Across the country, this policy has led to the disapproval of graduate programs not because of poor teaching or lack of institutional capacity but because of CHED’s rigid and literal interpretation of what counts as “aligned.”
Many Teacher Education Institutions have been denied authority to offer graduate programs in fields like Technology and Livelihood Education because they do not have four professors with doctorates specifically labeled as TLE.
Faculty members with PhDs in Computer Science, Curriculum Studies, or Educational Leadership—whose research and teaching are clearly relevant to TLE—are not recognized as core faculty. They may teach part-time, but they cannot advise theses or dissertations. This narrow application of policy reduces expertise to a matter of diploma titles rather than demonstrated competence, research, and intellectual contribution.
Unfortunately, even among those considered “aligned,” there are faculty whose performance and qualifications raise serious questions. Some are products of diploma mill universities, which casts doubt on the assumption that alignment alone guarantees quality.
The rule, as applied, values conformity over competence and reinforces a culture where documentation is more important than substance. Instead of cultivating excellence, CHED’s evaluative process has created an environment where compliance dominates reflection and innovation. A policy that should have encouraged disciplinary rigor has become an instrument of control that limits the diversity of thought and practice necessary for academic renewal.
The deeper problem is that such policies reinforce metro-centrism. Only large, well-funded universities in Manila and a few other urban centers can easily meet this narrow definition of faculty qualification.
Regional universities and colleges, many of which serve teachers and professionals who most need access to graduate programs, are penalized for their interdisciplinary faculty composition. This policy disproportionately affects Local Universities and Colleges outside Imperial Manila, which often cater to working professionals and first-generation learners.
Ironically, these institutions are the ones most aligned with CHED’s stated goals of inclusivity and regional development. By equating quality with conformity, CHED’s policy entrenches the very inequality it claims to correct. It privileges institutions that already possess resources while discouraging the growth of those that innovate out of necessity and context.
When one of the policy drafters was asked about this concern, they candidly admitted that the idea of vertical alignment has its limits. They recalled that some of his best professors during graduate school did not even come from his field.
They were engineers who taught philosophy of science, sociologists who guided his research, and psychologists who broadened his understanding of leadership and learning. They became experts not because of their degree titles but because of their scholarship and curiosity. True academic excellence, he recognized, is not confined within narrow disciplinary boundaries but flourishes when ideas are allowed to intersect, challenge, and enrich one another.
The belief that knowledge must flow vertically from undergraduate to doctoral studies within the same linear pipeline belongs to an outdated model of education. In the contemporary world, knowledge is fluid, networked, and problem-oriented.
The most significant advances in research now occur at the intersections of disciplines. Educational technology thrives when pedagogy and computer science collaborate. Science education is enriched by insights from sociology and cultural studies.
Policy research gains meaning when informed by psychology, economics, and ethics. Education itself is transdisciplinary, and to cling to a rigid notion of alignment is to ignore how knowledge is actually produced and how education can meaningfully respond to complex realities.
CHED’s current enforcement of this policy also undermines the principle of academic freedom. Universities are supposed to be trusted to determine competence, design curricula, and identify qualified mentors.
When a regulatory body dictates who can or cannot advise a graduate student based solely on degree titles, it replaces professional judgment with bureaucratic fiat. This not only weakens institutional autonomy but also diminishes the intellectual vitality of graduate programs. Academic freedom is not a luxury but the foundation of quality higher education. Without it, universities become administrative appendages rather than centers of inquiry.
The core question is what really constitutes expertise. If a scholar has devoted decades to teaching, researching, and publishing in a given area but holds a degree with a different label, should that person be considered less qualified than someone who merely holds the “correct” title but lacks substantive scholarly contribution?
CHED’s current framework implicitly answers yes, a position that reveals how policy can perpetuate anti-intellectualism under the guise of standardization. This reflects a broader problem in Philippine higher education where compliance and paperwork are often mistaken for evidence of quality.
There is a more progressive way forward. CHED can maintain standards without enforcing rigidity. It can recognize what may be called scholarly equivalence, allowing institutions to justify faculty competence through actual research, teaching excellence, and professional engagement rather than through degree titles alone.
Instead of counting diplomas, evaluators should assess how faculty contribute to knowledge production, how their research aligns with program goals, and how institutions nurture interdisciplinary collaboration. Such an approach aligns with global trends in higher education where flexibility, innovation, and institutional self-assessment are valued more than bureaucratic uniformity.
Graduate education must be understood not as a bureaucratic structure but as a living intellectual ecosystem. It should encourage cross-disciplinary inquiry, contextual problem-solving and creative synthesis.
Policies that suppress these ideals in favor of uniformity do not strengthen education; they weaken it by discouraging initiative and diversity of thought. CHED should trust universities to define quality according to their missions and contexts and to justify their decisions based on evidence of competence and integrity.
The vertical alignment rule, as currently implemented, reduces academic life to compliance checklists and undermines the very goals it was meant to advance.
If the Commission on Higher Education is serious about fostering innovation, it must move beyond this narrow logic and embrace a more holistic understanding of educational quality.
Philippine higher education does not need more bureaucratic control. It needs more intellectual courage, more trust in academic communities, and more openness to the evolving nature of knowledge. True quality lies not in uniformity but in diversity, not in rigid classification but in the freedom to think, question, and create.
Graduate education, at its best, is not about producing specialists trapped in disciplinary boxes. It is about forming scholars capable of seeing connections where others see walls, of bringing together ideas from multiple domains to confront the complexities of the real world.
The CHED policy on vertical alignment fails to recognize this vision. Unless it evolves, it will continue to penalize the very institutions and educators that are most capable of transforming Philippine education from within.
Maria Mercedes Arzadon ([email protected] ) is a professor at the College of Education of the University of the Philippines. Levi Elipane ([email protected]) is a professor and deputy dean of the College of Advanced Studies of the Philippine Normal University (PNU). Arlyne Marasigan ([email protected]) and Allen Espinosa ([email protected]) are professors and fellows at the Educational Policy Research and Development Office of PNU. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Philippine Normal University and the University of the Philippines.
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